INTRODUCTION

"Many of the best and most successful corporations in the world have adopted the Leadership Pipeline model as the core framework for their efforts on the human side of their businesses. Built around the common leadership 'passages' all leaders go through, it helps organizations select, develop, and assess based on specific responsibilities and work values at each leadership level."

BUILDING LEADERSHIP PIPELINE

Leaders are those who set the road map serve as a guideline and play a most important driving force in the organization for achieving the common goals. But, today with the rapid changes coming in the companies the leaders are either finding it difficult to cope up with this change or they are rapidly switching over. This change for better performance is depleting the leadership pool of the organization. This, becomes all the more difficult for small industries which does not possess the ability to hire superstars for themselves.

What is the solution?

The solution is there to search for leaders within the organization, develop and nurture from within because leaders are made not born. We need to search the potential leaders within the firm. By taking a proactive approach to your business leadership, you can keep your pipeline filled with home-grown leadership candidates. Instead of searching outwards for the "perfect" candidate, you can develop the characteristics and skills of the people you have now. Leadership is an ongoing process and keeping the flow going, one can continue to improve.

INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP PIPELINE HOW CAN ONE DEVELOP ITS LEADERSHIP PIPELINE? 1.) Look for "That Spark" By "spark," We mean the natural ability to communicate with people. Add to that, look for the ability to connect - meaning the ability to communicate and relate to people and build on this. The ability to connect is absolutely necessary because as a leader, one must have the ability to win others over . Train a cross section of promotable candidates on a regular basis. 2.) Create Development Plans Create development plans for the individuals with that spark. Teach them to leverage the talents that they already have and help them figure out their leadership performance gaps. Encourage them to leverage their current talents and persuade them to develop in other areas where their skills are inadequate for a leadership role.

3.) Coach and Mentor...Continuously Coaching and mentoring are crucial. The process starts with a relationship between you and the candidate then continues with regular bonding and nurturing. We must coach candidates with the intent of creating a business partner. Get their opinion on current company challenges.
4.) Classroom Training We recommend that we create or outsource leadership and management training for the existing leaders and for the individuals that you would like to develop. It's a great refresher for existing leaders and a great learning tool for prospective leaders.

Leadership is all about Building more leaders in the organization. Identifying, coaching and grooming high potential individuals play key role in building the leadership pipeline. In technology industry, it is critical to choose an individual who bring in technology passion, people quotient and business acumen. However these folks are not available read-made, need to be built over a period of time by grooming. 5.) Identify strengths Assuming that you are a leader who is looking forward to build your next set of leaders, the first step is to identify key strengths among the set of individuals, who can potentially take up the leadership position. Leaders need to spend significant amount of time by developing deeper listening to these individuals for assessment. Here are the typical questions you need to consider against each individual.

6.) Identifying his Attitude towards Problem Is he a detail oriented problem solver or generalist with common set of skills? Does he possess significant relationship building skills? What is his individual track record in interacting with customers? How good is his Emotional Quotient? Can he take people together in a compassionate manner? How does he react in pressure or conflicting situations? How good is his interest in self development? Has he shown interest in investing himself by taking up organization specific training programs or considers it as an overhead? The above mentioned questions may not be conclusive, but it would provide you with a clear indication of an individuals strengths. Once it becomes clear, he needs to be positioned to take up leadership roles, depending on his/her strength area. At the end of this assessment process you will have the list of potential people who are competent to some extent to take up leadership positions.

BENEFITS OF LEADERSHIP PIPELINE1.) Helps to understand the difference between the management and leadership roles because of the difference in skills.

2.) Facilitates individual performance improvement through coaching, mentoring, training, evaluation and future planning.
3.) Helps in succession planning and leadership development. 4.) Helps to identify and prevent potential failures. 5.) Improves selection processes.

6.) Diagnostic tool to identify and reduce mismatches between the individuals capabilities and their leadership style. 7.) Timing- it tells us when someone is ready to move to the next leadership level.

8.) Planning- plays a very important role for the future decision making with the help of efficient leadership pool.
9.) Driving force- a sort of driving force to set a road map for the fulfillment of the common goals and objectives of the organization. 10.) Employee manager- the organization gets an employee manager to manage them and motivate them in the desired direction to get the desired output.

DISADVANTAGES OF LEADERSHIP PIPELINE 1.) Aimed at larger organizations, it is basically meant for smaller organizations who can identify the potential leaders within their organization but it is an expensive project. 2.) It takes a long lead time to set up the framework and get out the desired person as a leader. 3.) It can be biased, a favored employee may be promoted to the next level. 4.) It may happen that the skills we are searching for within the organization may not be present and so we need to hire person from outside, so, there are chances of failure.